smalljaw67

One of the reasons I use a fluid bed is so I can dip the jighead and then cure it with out nipples. I don't like the method of heating enough so the paint just sticks, what usually happens when you do 20 or 30 jigs like that is you end up with 10 or so with bare spots, to me that isn't a good theing to do unless you really have it mastered. I say that because the only time I ever got nipples after curing was from stuffing the jighead in the small jars, once I used the fluid bed I have probably painted and cured thousands of jigs without a nipple, before the fluidbed I would get them when using glittler and clear or 2 colors but not now.

Lure Parts Online will make you whatever you want but they also have heads already poured on closed loop wire forms.

Very nice!!!! What kind of head is that? It will get bit for sure!!!

In most cases it isn't the line that grooves up the guides but the friction caused by the junk that sticks to the line. Cotton wood fibers stick to braid much more than mono or flouro which is why you don't hear too much about those lines and the same thing when it comes to recoil guides, anglers in the north don't have too many problems but those fishing where cotton wood fibers are present hate the guides because the fibers will groove the guides after a while.

Will Wetline gave you some good places for supplies to get started, and Cadman gave you great advis that you should follow. I started making my own stuff in 1998 and it was spinnerbaits and I did nothing but spinnerbaits until 2001 when I began to make jigs. I tell anyone wanting to do it that if your main objective is saving money then forget it, just to make 25 jigs will cost $200 to do it with cutting corners, and figure more if you want high end hooks. The other part is the addiction that takes place, if you love to fish and love all things fishing like tackle then you will quickly get into it and have a ton of stuff and a whole lot of money invested. I love making spinnerbaits and jigs but it is costly to get started but it isn't impossible, if you want to do it right and say you wanted to make football jigs, you could buy the heads raw unpainted and then paint them, tie your own skirt and add the weedguard, see how you like doing that and if you want to do more then invest in a bottom pour pot and a mold. Like Cadman said, if you have a passion then go for it but if you are looking to save money, well it will take a long time to recoup the initial investment but more than likely you wouldn't save a daime because you would end up buying different molds, more hooks or skirt material, trust me, it never stops and there is always something you will need.

I know you have limited budget Fowlskies and if you can afford to save $65 bucks you can get a good jig rod that is plenty sensitive and head and shoulders on what you have now but you need to be able to deal with a full grip. Tackle Warehouse has the Quantum Tour Edition PT on sale, this rod was originally $119 and the older one I have was $150 with the only difference being cosmetics and Fuji Alconite Guides in place of the Pac Bay Hialoy guides. Besides that it still uses their HSX62 blank which is a good blank, even better than the new Tactical series. There are many options and the BuCoo is a great rod but it just would work well with jigs, and I don't think it would be as sensitive as you might think because of the flex in it, fast action rods that are stiff transmit subtle vibration much better and faster that a moderate action.

I too have the old silver model Kinetic, 5 years and still going strong, I just cleaned and lubed it a moth ago. I have the burner 7.0:1 with an IPT of 28" full spool, it is a work horse reel, I used it hard as a spinnerbait/chatterbait/buzzbait reel and no complaints, a good value at $100.

Do yourself a favor and don't worry about it standing up on the bottom, as stated earlier in the thread, very seldom does a jig and worm on a lake or river bottom act like it does in a controled enviroment like a 12" deep aquarium with a short piece of line tied to it. I like worms that have salt in them and do very well with a shakey head, I just caught 3 nice largemouth in 9' of water Janary 12th in Pennsylvania using a 1/16oz shakey head and a 4.5" worm. In 38 degree water a small profile was needed but if the worm I was using was a floating worm it would have never made it to the bottom, if I used an 1/8oz or larger head I would have been making the profile of my bait larger and maybe I wouldn't have got bit. My partner was using a floating worm on a 1/8oz head and didn't get a bite, so don't worry about it, now if you are fishing and someone is killing them on a floating style worm then yes, make a switch but I keep both floating models and sinking models to fish on a shakey head, they all work.

The BuCoo isn't going to be good for jigs at all, the action is designed for reation baits meaning it has a great deal of flex. Another reason you don't want it for jigs is the fact that flex will make it hard to drive a jig hook through the jaw of a bass, you got a good rod for square bills and traps, a little soft for spinnerbaits for me but it will still work but absolutely no on the jigs.

All of their rods are moderate fast action, I emailed TW to ask why and I was told that they made them with super lines in mind so a fast action they felt would be too stiff. I can see that with certain rods but all of them?

I liked the Vendetta and the Veritas rods a lot but the Verdict was a miss and the Villian I would say is a disappointment. I really wanted one but because of the price I wanted to at least hold it and inspect it first and when I got to fish with a buddy's rod, 7'1" MH it wasn't what I expected. The reel seat felt funny but you could get used to that, and the rod was much heavier than advertised, and it wasn't crip, it just lacked a realy good feel on the texas rigged worm I tried with it. I used it for close to an hour and decided I wasn't going to get one but it is well made, it wasn't sloppy and the build was nice, it just didn't have the feel I expected based on the other rods they made.

I got a rod in the mail a month ago, the bottom guide had the insert missing, I called and they told me a new one was in the mail along with a return label, pack the rod up and when the new one comes just slap the return label over the old one and send it back....Just that easy, the best customer service and shipping is fast too. you may find it cheaper but you'll never have the piece of mind that you get from TW.

Define a decent price.....

I love Rapala baits, the DT and DT Fat series along with the DT Flats have done well for me. My fishing partner hated them for breaking and I was wondering why his were busting until we were on a crank bite one day and I watched in horror as he got some weeds on the back hook and proceeded to slam the lure straight into the water 3 or 4 times to get rid of the weeds. I looked at him and said, yep, I can see how you are breaking baits, BTW 2 hours later the the Lucky Craft BDS he was throwing shattered, the plastic took longer to bust than the balsa but it broke and I said you better not complain, they weren't made to take that kind of abuse.

Nice job!!! The jerkbait is second only to a spinnerbait when it comes to my favorites and Rangerphil was spot on, when you are getting them on the front hook you are dialed in with size and color!!! Don't fall into the spring and fall only with them, get some shallow diving floating style baits like a Rattlin' Rogue, Rapala Flat Rap or Original Floater or high end with the new Spro McStick 115!! Fish them fast and erratic with quick 1 or 2 second pauses over shallow weed beds and flats and you'll be amazed at how well it works!!

My favorite is the Snootie for those types of applications and I have made chatterbaits with them. Yes, it isn't easy to get a split ring on the hook eye of a big hook but it isn't hard either with a good pair of split ring pliers. You do have to use a double split ring, it does work but depending on how you use a chatterbait you'll either love it or hate it. What the double split ring is good for is using the bait as a straight up sprinnerbait reeling steady with occasional rod sweeps, the double split ring causes a lot of side to side movement when you speed it up but it isn't good for dropping the bait and ripping it off the bottom like guys like to do. I found that making them with a spinnerbait head and bending the wire around the blade works well for an all purpose chatterbait. The Snootie is a jig that comes through grass better than even a bullet head, plus the design is such that it makes for a nice compact flipping jig in the 1/2oz and 5/8oz and even though the hook is a 60 degree bend it makes a great swim jig and the large eyes make it look fantastic in the water. The problem with that is you will need to get 2 molds as the 1/4oz cavity is on one mold and the 3/8oz and 1/2oz are on a seperate mold. The Arky jig is very versatile, but as Cadman mentioned, it isn't great in grass but does well in rock and wood but one mold hasn't been mentioned, the weedless round head, it uses flat eye hooks so the 5304 is out but you can use the 5326 Owner crosseye, you would get the 5/16oz, 3/8oz, and the 7/16oz mold, the round head works pretty good everywhere, it requires only 1 split ring for a chatterbait that works nice and with a sparse skit and trailer you can swim it.

The manager of my local Cabelas is going to call me when they come in. They are a little late in getting newer tackle as I had my Elite Tech Smallmout rod for almost a year before they got them in. I want to handle them but based on the review done at *** I may just order one, perhaps the 7'2" MH-XF but I'd have to get it from Fewnick as TW doesn't have that model.

Allen is correct, Manns makes that bait called the "classic" but the reaon you don't see a ton of baits like that is they lack versatility. That bait can only be fished slow rolled up a a modest speed, Hank Parker has to slow down with a 6.3:1 gear ratio to work the bait otherwise it lays over on its side, very unbalanced. I tried making them like that early on around 2000 or 2001 and since my bender isn't capable of twisted loop line ties I bought the wire forms with the twisted eye, some I left stock others I cut and rebent and tried making a similar bait that I use at higher speed, light wire, and held up. 5 straight years of tinkering with design and paying good money to have my molds machined to what I wanted resulted in 1 conclusion, the only way I can make the bait go a little faster was to either donwsize the blades which lowered vibration or leave move the head back using slightly heavier wire to balance out the bait making the twisted eye usless to me. It really is a game of balances, you need to balance head size with wire and blade sizes in order to get the bait to work the way you want. For me the pefect spinnerbait is a few different ones, I make one for burning that are horrible and anything else, ones for slow rolling deep and slow roll shallow and everywhere in between. Most want hard vibration and that kind of bait works but to get really hard vibration you need to give up durability, or balance, balance is what the Classic spinnerbait gives up, it makes up for durability by twisting the eye and keeping the distance from the line tie to the head extremely short. I like the Classic, it was always a great bait for me but I needed faster when I discovered smallmouths!!!

Believe it or not you can actually get brass hubs from LPO, they make them from like 1/16oz up to 1/4oz and have a nice nub to flair the skirt if you tie it on.

Very nice!!!! The center one is my favorite, nice clean collars, great job!!! What size hooks? 2/0 maybe? I tied some fooball heads earlier this year using the same style hook in a 3/0 and the hair was a little more sparse at the hook bend. I really like those, good luck.

I've made spinnerbaits with .029 up to .041, any heavier and it belongs on a musky bait or a buzzbait. If you want a durable bait with vibration the .035 will be more durable than the .032 but will still give you vibration. Now, if you are buiding baits with 2 blades you're in luck as you can use the blade spacing to account for the heavier wire. For example I make a small arm 3/8oz bait that I call a finesse spinnerbait, I use the .035 wire and the frame size would normally be what you would see on a 1/4oz bait. The blades are #3.5 willow on the bottom and the swivel blade is a #4 willow, normally on that I would use a small metal sleeve and a 1/8" metal bead as the space between blades but I want it to vibrate like a smaller .032 so instead of spacing the blade with the sleeve and the bead I use 3 beads, it makes a difference of about 1/4" or so but it is a big deal. The reason is when the blades spin they create torque and that torque causes the wire to shake or vibrate, the blades are spaced far enough apart to even out the torque across the entire arm but when you use heavier wire you loose vibration and the only way to change it is to add bigger blades or change the spacing. Changing the spacing works because it puts the torque of both blades in a small area near the end of the wire so instead of having the torque spread out over the entire blade arm you are concentrating it at the top of the blade arm making it act like you are using a single large blade. With that set up you get the flash of 2 blades but the vibration of a single large blade allowing you to use a slightly heavier wire for more durability yet keeping all the vibration of the thinner wire. If you are using a single blade then just upsize the blade a single size like a #4 to a #5, simple.

I only use braid for frogs and heavy jig fishing and what I mean by that is putting the jig in cover that a MH rod and 20lb line is too light to fish it. So for that I tie direct, no leader and I hate flouro so if I'm not using braid it is a good copoly. I often throw jigs, worms, and soft jerkbaits into lilly pad fields, and once again, the pads have to be thick for braid use otherwise I'll go with 15 or 17lb copoly. I often am fishing in clear water conditions so that is why my limited use of braid and I hate tying leaders, I've done it, I used mono and flouro leaders and I didn't get any more bites or bigger fish than what I normally use and that is just the way it is so copoly in the appropriate size for what you're doing and 50lb braid for frogs and heavy jig fishing. BTW I'm in the north east, if I was down south it would be different.

I have the first Gen Vendetta, it is the cheapest rod I own but I really like it, I got it an an all purpose type rod and now it is primarily a spinnerbait stick. I have used it for jerkbaits, and senkos and even light jigs and you can't beat it for the price.

If you have a dedicated setup for open water only then it would be ok I guess, but around any kind of cover it isn't too good and forget rocks.

If you have a good sonar set up you can find the breaks, the edges of those are a good place to start as well as any structure off shore but you need to find and when you do find it a drop shot is a great way to catch them. Another way that works is a 3/4oz or 1oz jig with a hollow belly, shadalicious, or money minnow on it, you can work it on the bottom and it will attract a bigget bite but shaky heads and drop shots will be the best choice if the fish aren't in a biting mood. If you can find actual fish but you can find rock piles and ditches then use the shaky head to probe around, the drop shot for me is a vertical presentation to fish I actually mark but if I see possible fish holding then a shaky head will cover a little more water.